United States

Kamala Harris, asserts Donald Trump, “is a communist.” The assertion is, of course, another blatant falsehood.

And the fact that the former president is resorting to the well-tried, but somewhat discredited, tactic of red-baiting demonstrates how desperate the Trump campaign has become since Harris took over from President Joe Biden.

Kamala Harris does have certain political beliefs and policies that run counter to those of Donald Trump, conservative voters and the Republican Party. The one that rankles most with conservatives is her support for America’s limited social safety net. Vice President Harris supports the universal retirement benefits (ie social security), Medicare (health benefits for the elderly) and Medicaid (health care for low-income Americans). She also favours abortion rights which puts her on a collision course with the evangelical right.

In European terms, such views would put Kamala Harris on the right wing of social democrats. The problem is that a large number of Americans – especially Republicans – drop the word “democrats” when talking about their allies and refer to Europeans simply as “socialists.” Furthermore, many of them wrongly equate democratic socialism with a slightly lesser form of communism.

Communism, however, is different. It promotes a classless society where all property is communally owned and the state controls the means of production. Because this system runs counter to human nature, a repressive government led by an unelected elite is require to enforce it. That is not being proposed by Kamala Harris. But hey ho, Donald Trump has never let the truth stand in the way of a good dog whistle conspiracy.

Gaza

The Gaza ceasefire talks appear to be going nowhere. According to the New York Times, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tabled a new set of conditions which will almost certainly be rejected in Hamas who are refusing to attend talks in Qatar.

In addition, the assassination of negotiator Ismail Haniyeh has elevated hardliner Yahya Sinwar to the job. He is hiding in Hamas’s tunnel labyrinth and has said he would fight to the last Gazan.

Hanging over the ceasefire talks is the threat of Iran to retaliate for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil. What that retaliation will involve is a worrying unknown, and the Iranians are keen to keep that way.

To confront the fear the Americans have ordered a nuclear-powered submarine equipped with cruise missiles to the Middle East. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also despatched to the region a second aircraft carrier group and amphibious craft capable of landing several thousand marines. The Israeli government has told its citizens to stockpile food and water in safe rooms.

The Iranians have been briefing journalists that the one thing that would stop a retaliation would be a Gaza ceasefire. But that prospect is slipping further and further away.

The New York Times reported that this week the Netanyahu government has tabled several more conditions to the proposal they issued in May.  These include Israeli control of the Egyptian-Gaza border and a series of obstacles to the return of refugees to their homes in north Gaza. It has been reported that the new proposals are opposed by both the Israeli negotiators in Qatar and senior military people.

At the same time, the Israeli government is tightening its illegal occupation of the West Bank. This week far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich gave the go-ahead for Israeli settlers to build on Palestinian land near Bethlehem. This latest annexation has also angered historians and UN officials because the land is a protected UNESCO world heritage site because of its extensive network of ancient terraces for grapes and olive trees.

Smotrich himself has built an illegal house on the West Bank. He is a supporter of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposes Palestinian statehood, and denies the existence of the Palestinian people. As minister with with responsibility for the occupied Palestinian territories, he has spoken of clandestine Israeli efforts to practically annex territories in the West Bank, first as a fait accompli, then by force of law.

Since October 7, Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian settlements have multiplied several fold. The latest was on Thursday when another Palestinian was killed. In Gaza the death toll topped 40,000 this week.

Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishido quit this week for one good reason: He is unpopular.

But then the sclerotic structure of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democrat Party combined with Japan’s mounting structural problems makes political life difficult in Japan.

At the top of Japan’s underlying troubles is Japan’s growing elderly population. The country’s median age is one of the world’s highest – 48. This means increasing pressure on younger Japanese to support their elders.

Many countries would deal with the problem by easing immigration rules. There has been some relaxation, but the Japanese pride themselves on their homogeneity which means foreign workers are few and far between.

So are women in the workforce.  Japan has yet to fully adopt feminism and there are significant blocks for women entering the workforce and glass ceilings for those who manage to barge past the front door.

Less money in because of a shrinking workforce and more money out on social services means more borrowing. Japan has one of the world’s highest ratios of government borrowing to Gross Domestic Product—260 percent. This high ratio in turn makes it more difficult for the government to innovate in order to resolve structural problems.

Finally, borrowing will continue to rise because of growing regional instability and Japan’s geographic position just offshore but right in the centre of Asian problems. Until recently, the country’s pacifist wing has kept defense spending to one percent of GDP. It is now 1.5 percent and scheduled to rise to two percent by 2027.

A major change in Japanese politics is required to break the logjam. But it is nowhere sight. The Liberal Democrats have a stranglehold on power and this has in turn led to revolving door premierships. Mr Kishida recognises this. Announcing his resignation, he said:  “I made my decision based on a strong desire…for political reform. The most obvious first step…is for me to step down.”

X

There is a good reason for Elon Musk’s decision to interview Donald Trump on X – money.

The same reason is driving his decision to throw expletives at the EU; accuse British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of “two-tier policing” and claim in the wake of recent riots that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK.

It is also the logic  behind Musk’s decision to restore posting rights to various far-right figures, including: Misogynist Andrew Tate, co-leader of Britain First Paul Golding, American white supremacist Anthime Gionet, far-right conspiracy theorist Rogan O’Handley, and, of course, Donald Trump, who was suspended after the January 6 Capitol Hill riots.

All the above generate tens of millions of followers and followers generate advertising. Trump, for instance, has 89.3 million followers on X. Andrew Tate has 8.5 million. Whenever a follower clicks on their mentor’s latest musings an ad appears next to the comment. That ad costs the advertiser $.38 per thousand impressions.

In 2021, Twitter (as it was then known) generated $5 billion in advertising revenues. After Musk had been in the Chairman’s seat for a year, revenues had plummeted by 40 percent and the company recorded a loss of $456 million in the first quarter of 2023. Soon afterwards, the company ceased to be publicly traded.

One of the reasons for the revenue drop was a public dislike of Musk. But another was the decision of the previous management to ban a number of far-right conspiracy theorists whose hate-filled hyperbolic tweets generated traffic from supporters and non-supporters who felt the need to be offended.

Many of these far-right types migrated to the Russian social media platform Telegram who provide their users with a cloak of anonymity. This is reinforced with encrypted messaging to make it near impossible to identify writers of race-hate messages. Telegram was the platform of choice for those involved in the recent British race riots.

Musk is clearly trying to turn X into the platform of the right and far-right in order to create a large block of easily identifiable contributors which hopes advertisers cannot ignore. This strategy has its drawbacks. Big brand name advertisers (who bring in big bucks) have withdrawn their support because they don’t want their brand associated with the far-right, especially race-hate agitators. They include media giants such as Disney and Paramount and Tech companies including Apple and IBM. Musk has threatened to sue them, but the advertisers are not worried.

Advertising produced 90 percent of X’s revenues. This has been slowly changing as Musk introduced his paid-for blue tick service. He has also intimated that he wants to charge all of his active users a nominal monthly subscription and introduce a banking function similar to PayPal. But he still requires hundreds of millions of users and people like Donald Trump and Andrew Tate will pull them in.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain". To subscribe to his email alerts on world affairs click here.